Privacy, Affiliate Links, Cookies: This site uses cookies, including to identify the country you are visiting from and to measure traffic to third-party sites.

I invest a lot of time and money into running this site, and I use affiliate links to help get a little of this money back. If you click on an affiliate link and purchase anything, I will receive a small commission. These affiliate providers use cookies to understand the referrals I've made and whether an ad was shown. These cookies do not reveal your identity, web use, or other behaviour.

By continuing to use this site, you agree to the use of cookies. To learn more about what cookies are stored and how they're used, you can find my Privacy Policy here:
Privacy Policy

Genna Pierce’s life is finally falling into place. Perfect grades? Check. Her choice of scholarship now that basketball recruiters are sniffing around? Check. The hot guy she’s crushed on since freshman year finally noticing her? Looks like it’ll be a check any day now.

But when a freak accident sidelines Genna, her perfect life starts breaking apart into a million less-than-perfect pieces. No more scholarships. Spiraling grades. And she’s sure Jake Butler, her forever crush, will have zero interest in someone as broken as she is.

Except Jake does want to stick around. He may have started falling for the girl Genna used to be, but he’ll wait for the girl she could become—if she can find enough left in her to pick up the pieces and start again.

How do I even begin to review this? I cried so many times, but I’m going to be upfront and say that it might not hit other people as hard. I don’t know…maybe it will. It’s just that this book touched on some own personal issues that I’ve been going through the past year and a bit, and it was so damn hard. This book was a lot heavier than I thought it would be when I picked it up, dealing with drug abuse, attempted suicide and divorce. You’ve been warned.

Genna is a senior in high school, on her way to a college scholarship for playing basketball. Her whole life is basketball. She loves it; she lives it. And then, just after the guy she’s been crushing on since freshman year admits that her strength and ability on the court are super attractive… she has an accident. One that permanently destroys her ability to play. And if that wasn’t bad enough, her family starts falling apart.

From the beginning, I could tell how important basketball was to Genna. Highley included little details of how Genna prepares for games, how she plays, etc. which added an extra touch of believability to the story. I could completely get behind her spiral out of control after losing it.

What’s more, I could also understand and relate to her feelings around her parents. Her reactions, like believing straight away what was happening, might seem far-fetched to other people, and if I hadn’t had the exact same reactions myself, I would have probably thought they were weird or extreme. But no, believe me, they weren’t. The one thing I did struggle with was towards the end, but I won’t say too much. All I’ll tell you is that it’s been just over a year since I went through her predicament, and it’s still seriously f***ing hard, which is probably why I kept bawling at intervals while reading.

A note on the romance… Oh my sweet baby jock. Jake was amazing. He was so supportive and caring and also clearly a gorgeous specimen of a man. He was attracted to Genna for her strength and athleticism, a nice change from jocks going for cutesy little girls with no athletic ability. He stuck by her though, even after her accident, and that won him sooooo many points. I hated reading about him hurting, wanting to shake Genna over and over when she did particularly hurtful things.

Overall, it took me a few days to read, and it caused me a lot of heartache, but I enjoyed reading it. Thank you so much to Entangled for offering it up for review again. I honestly think it deserves more love and attention from all of you wonderful readers!

Follow me

Ways to subscribe

Like what you see?

Star ratings

0: Couldn't finish1: Want my precious reading hours back2: Could have done without it3: It was good, but it's not an essential read4: Really liked it and glad I picked it up5: Absolutely loved it and would read again

Things I’ve said

Disclaimer

Unless otherwise stated, I do not claim ownership of any images or other media.

Dani Reviews Things is a participant in the Amazon EU Associates Programme, an affiliate advertising programme designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.co.uk.

Dani Reviews Things is also part of The Book Depository's affiliate program.